Henry Alexander Wise (December 3, 1806 – September 12, 1876) was an American attorney, diplomat, politician and slave owner[1] from Virginia.

As the 33rd Governor of Virginia, Wise served as a significant figure on the path to the American Civil War, becoming heavily involved in the 1859 trial of abolitionist John Brown.

After leaving office in 1860, Wise also led the move toward Virginia's secession from the Union in reaction to the election of Abraham Lincoln and the Battle of Fort Sumter.

After the Civil War ended, Wise accepted that slavery had been abolished and advocated a peaceful national reunification.

[2] He was privately tutored until his twelfth year, when he entered Margaret Academy, near Pungoteague in Accomack County.

[4] After attending Henry St. George Tucker's Winchester Law School, Wise was admitted to the bar in 1828.

[8] Sarah's sister Margaretta married George G. Meade, who was a major general for the Union in the American Civil War.

In the nineteen years of marriage to his first two wives, Wise fathered fourteen children; seven survived to adulthood.

[17] In 1840 Wise was active in securing the nomination and election of John Tyler as Vice President on the Whig ticket.

A delegate to the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1850, Wise opposed any reforms, insisting that the protection of slavery came first.

"[24]: 236  This stance played a large role in scuttling his preparations for a bid to challenge incumbent Robert M.T.

Wise was intensely interested in the case of John Brown, who briefly assaulted the town of Harpers Ferry.

[25] He said he found it humiliating that Brown's ragtag group could take Harpers Ferry, Virginia, and hold it for even one hour.

"[30] However, Governor Wise did many things to augment rather than reduce tensions: by insisting he was tried in Virginia and turning Charles Town into an armed camp full of state militia units.

On the contrary, the popularity Wise gained in the South for executing Brown, and the other captured members of his party led to Southern support for him as a presidential candidate in 1860.

So many accepted that there was a special train to take two hundred of them from Philadelphia to Richmond, where they were addressed by Wise and enjoyed an elegant banquet.

Other Southern advisors to Buchanan included Senator John Slidell of Louisiana and Robert Tyler of Virginia.

Buchanan, although a Pennsylvania Democrat, held Southern sympathies, was a strict constructionist and detested abolitionists and "Black Republicans".

Frustrated with the convention's inaction through mid-April, Wise helped plan actions by Virginia state militia to seize the Federal Arsenal at Harpers Ferry and the Gosport Navy Yard in Norfolk.

[citation needed] He commanded a brigade in the division of Maj. Gen. Theophilus H. Holmes on the New Market Road during the Seven Days Battles.

I had determined, if I could help it, my descendants should never be subject to the humiliation I have been subject to, by the weakness, if not the wickedness, of slavery; and while I can not recognize as lawful and humane the violent and shocking mode in which it has been abolished, yet I accept the fact most heartily as an accomplished one, and am determined not only to abide by it and acquiesce in it, but to strive by all the means in my power to make it benificent to both races and a blessing especially to our country.

I unfeignedly rejoice in the fact, and am reconciled to many of the worst calamities of the war, because I am now convinced that the war was a special providence of God, unavoidable by the nation at either extreme, to tear loose from us a black idol from which we could never have been separated by any other means than those of fire and blood, sword and sacrifice.

However, the Constitution prohibited passing laws that would make illegal "the right of property in negro slaves" so far as the legislature was concerned (Article 1).

In 1865 he tried to reclaim Rolleston, his plantation outside Norfolk, but was turned down by General Grant, considering that he did not make the Ironclad Oath.

The U.S. commander in Norfolk, Maj. Gen. Alfred H. Terry, appropriated it and other plantations for the Freedmen's Bureau to establish schools for formerly enslaved people and their children.

"The officers who confiscated the place found in the house among numerous other papers a plan of secession drawn up by Wise in 1857, and approved by Jeff Davis and several other prominent men In the South.

"[51] "It is said that ex-Governor Wise chafes a good deal and even foams at the mouth, because his house is used by old John Brown's daughter as a school-house for teaching little niggers.

[55] While working in his law career, Wise wrote a book based on his public service, entitled Seven Decades of the Union (1872).

A third son, John, served in the Confederate Army as a VMI cadet; he also later became an attorney and was elected as a US Representative.

He quoted Governor Wise: "I have met the Black Knight with his visor down, and his shield and lance are broken.